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Released by: Mill Creek Entertainment
Released on: April 21st, 2020.
Director: Kiyotaka Taguchi
Cast: Kensuke Takahashi, Akane Sakanoue, Yoshihiko Hosoda, Ukyo Matsumoto
Year: 2016
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Ultraman X: The Movie - Here He Comes! Our Ultraman - Movie Review:
A feature film version of the 2015 Ultra Series television series Ultraman X, 2016's Ultraman X: The Movie - Here He Comes! Our Ultraman opens with a series of clips from various newscasts wherein we see how Gourman's attempts to bring back the original Ultraman didn't quite work out. Daichi Ozora (Kensuke Takahashi), however, has made it back to Japan from Australia, just as the other Xio members pick up some strange signals coming from Japan's Akita Prefecture.
This ties into the exploits of one Carlos Kurozaki (Michael Tomioka), a TV show host/treasure hunter who has made his way into a strange underground pyramid with his crew. He's down there to generate some televised hype, but when he takes a gem that he shouldn't be taking out of the pyramid, without realizing it he unleashes a giant, spiny monster named Zaigorg capable of wreaking mass havoc across the land. Zaigorg wants the gem back, and in order to do so creates a literal army of crazy looking kaiju monsters to help in its quest to do so.
With a whole bunch of giant monsters now running around, Ultraman X has to time up with Ultraman Tiga and, hooray!, the original Ultraman to stop Zaigorg and his kaiju spawn from destroying Japan and possibly the world!
Heavy on digital effects work that looks exactly like digital effects work tends to look, this movie nevertheless still has a decent amount of old school rubber suit action to keep old cranky guys like me entertained and amused. The fights are pretty epic, loaded with wanton destruction and plenty of lasers and explosions, and the creature design is great. The human characters are likeable enough, and unlike a lot of tokusatsu shows and kaiju movies, get a bit more development than you might expect (which is a good thing as it results in characters that actually matter a little bit, and those who have seen enough of this material know that this is not always the case).
Really though, it's the monsters and the fights between those monsters that are the main draw here, and on that level the movie is satisfying enough. This was made to be a fiftieth anniversary special release, and maybe it feels a little underwhelming for that reason, but overall this is plenty entertaining and at only seventy-two-minutes in length, you can't really complain about the pacing.
Ultraman X: The Movie - Here He Comes! Our Ultraman - DVD Review:
The AVC encoded 1080p 1.78.1 widescreen transfer on this 25GB Blu-ray disc looks quite nice, with the feature taking up just over 21Gbs of space it has a decent bit rate. Detail can vary a bit from scene to scene depending on the prominence of the digital effects work used in a specific scene, but overall this transfer is just fine - free of major (though not minor) compression artifacts, quite colorful and very clean without looking to have been digitally processed. The colors really do pop here, they're reproduced very nicely.
There are24-bit DTS-HD 2.0 stereo tracks provided in the films' native Japanese as well as a dubbed English option, with subtitles provided translating the Japanese dialogue. Both tracks sound fine though, maybe not surprisingly, the movie plays better in its native tongue, as the dubbing is more than a little bit goofy on the English version. Either way, the levels are balanced on both tracks and they sound quite clean.
There are no extras on the disc (not even a trailer) save for a static menu screen. However, the disc does come packaged with an insert containing a code redeemable for a digital HD download version of the movie.
Ultraman X: The Movie - Here He Comes! Our Ultraman- The Final Word:
Ultraman X: The Movie - Here He Comes! Our Ultraman will appeal to those with an affection for Power Rangers/KyÅryÅ« Sentai Zyuranger and other tokusatsu style programming. It lacks the retro charm of the earlier series that birthed it, but if you're into watching monsters and superheroes beat each other up, it delivers plenty of that and more. Mill Creek Entertainment's Blu-ray release is devoid of extras but it looks and sounds quite nice and you can't argue with the price.
Click on the images below for full-sized Ultraman X: The Movie - Here He Comes! Our Ultraman screen caps!
